How To: DIY Arduino Balancing Surface

Here’s another superb Arduino project using just a few simple components (which are available in our DIY projects store). It’s a pretty simple setup using a laptop, webcam, servos, and an Arduino to monitor and balance a ball bearing on a flat surface. The ball’s position is traced via webcam and Processing. Based on the ball’s position, the servos make corrections to move the ball around the board. See the video above for full details.

Once the rig has been built and hooked up to a laptop running the code, the steel bearing can be placed anywhere on the board and made to follow either pre-programmed routines or via mouse control. The webcam tracks the ball, keeping it from falling off the edge. Check out the full details and code.